The present invention relates generally to data storage systems and in particular to migration of data in a data storage system.
Current policy based storage management systems can result in unpredictable migration of data even if a user (e.g., an administrative user) specifies criteria for when data migration is to be performed and the target(s) of the migration. The reason is that the user may lack certain current information such as a new configuration due to the addition of new equipment.
Typical data management software manages data based on usage characteristics and the value of the information to the enterprise to determine whether or not migration operations on data will be performed. The software automatically manages data based on user-defined policy(ies) as the correct policy over a long period of time; the policy would be changed because the administrator does not know the whole system and cannot find the problems in the system. The policy shows that the result is better. The policy changes over time because the user (e.g., administrator) does not possess a complete view of the system and thus is not aware of a problem in the system that could change the policy. Consequently, the resulting migration of data can be mistakenly viewed as being proper.